[reshambabble]

Singapore is also a tiny island with a limited population that has to import most everything. Over 40 years they've somehow created a culture of hard-working over-achievers and have one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world (they're currently #3). Being dependent on imported goods doesn't seem to be much of a problem here, so perhaps the secret lies in their carefully planned cultural shift. (But if it were me, I'd much rather be a Kiwi with a lower income and laid back lifestyle than a Singaporean with high expectations and a life of hard work).

[zhemao]

Singapore is not nearly as isolated as NZ is. It's on a major ocean shipping lane and is just a bridge away from Malaysia. The problem isn't that NZ is reliant on imports (all countries are to a degree), it's that it is expensive to ship things there since it is out-of-the-way.

That being said, there probably is also a cultural element. I wouldn't really say it was a cultural shift. It's more that the relative stability and increasing globalization in the latter half of the 20th century gave Singaporeans the opportunity to realize their entrepreneurial ambitions.

[vacri]

Singapore is on every shipping lane between east Asia and every location west of East Asia until you hit the far end of Europe and Africa. You effectively have to specifically go out of your way to avoid it.

New Zealand is so isolated that there's an entire continent between them and "through traffic" shipping lanes.

[mikeyouse]

A non-insubstantial amount of Singapore's GDP comes from tax evasion and money laundering from corrupt businesses and individuals.[1] Most corrupt Asian wealth is stored or laundered through Singapore. From Ferdinand Marcos[a], Robert Mugabe[b], Suharto's closest advisors[c], the Chinese princelings[d], Burma's military junta[e], Russia's oligarchs[f] etc etc.

This is in addition to their 'legal' tax avoidance-derived GDP. In 2012, Apple did $14 Billion in revenue in Singapore, which was more than they had in the rest of Asia combined, yet they didn't have a single store or manufacturing center in the city-state.[2] Microsoft actually beat Apple to setup a Singapore-based affiliate for the same purpose.

I'm curious to see how they fare in a decade after these sources of 'income' are greatly restricted in the global crackdown.[3]

One of these days, I'm going to devote a few hours to calculating how much of Singapore's GDP / Tax base only exists due to their status as a tax haven.

[1] - http://www.icij.org/search/node/singapore

[a] - http://globalnation.inquirer.net/95743/pnb-gets-marcos-loot-...

[b] - http://www.icij.org/offshore/mugabe-crony-among-thai-names-s...

[c] - http://www.icij.org/offshore/billionaires-among-thousands-in...

[d] - http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/74093618828/chinas...

[e] - http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/singapore-a-friend-indee...

[f] - http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/036282b4-be65-11de-b4ab-00144...

[2] - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/24/us-singapore-tax-i...

[3] - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-singapore-bank...